In an emergency situation such as a fire, severe weather, a school shooting, or an act of terrorism, parents of children enrolled in a school affected by the emergency need to be notified of the situation and of what course of action to take. The most common emergency notification system for schools, however, is the phone tree. It can take hours to complete a phone tree, and the messages that find their way to parents are often inconsistent or incomplete. Furthermore, the situation may change before parents get the original message.
For non-emergency situations, such as school scheduled event or school sport scheduling changes, notifying parents of the changes in activities or scheduling is generally done through paper notices sent home with children. Parents may miss the paper notification for any number of reasons resulting in missed activities or the inconvenience of arriving for an activity that is scheduled for a later time.
Some electronic notification systems enable parents to become apprised of both emergency situations and school scheduling changes. However, the notification systems have drawbacks. For example, registration on an alert system may be time consuming and complicated if several registration steps and website visits are required to complete registration. Another problem may arise when electronic devices are used to notify parents. Device address entry processes may be problematic because a parent may not know if the contact device address is entered correctly or if the notification system is accurate until after an alert situation arises. This prevents a parent from responding to a situation in the same manner if the alert had been sent correctly. Even if the correct contact information is entered into a notification system, notification groups may be incomplete or inaccurate. Parents may not have a way to verify that they are members of desired notification groups and thus may not receive alerts from groups they thought they would. Another potential drawback to a notification system is that devices entered into a notification system may be unavailable to parents, and thus parents may be unable to check whether alerts have been sent.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus that provides an improved notification system. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art.